Actress Katherine Heigl attends the 2014 NBC Upfront Presentation on May 12 where the network announced she'll star in the drama, "State of Affairs," set to premiere this fall along with a slew of new offerings.

Actress Katherine Heigl attends the 2014 NBC Upfront Presentation on May 12 where the network announced she'll star in the drama, "State of Affairs," set to premiere this fall along with a slew of new offerings. (Slaven Vlasic, Getty Images)

Last week as TV networks announced their lineup for the upcoming season, I noticed more grumbling than usual about the short life span that befalls shows that aren't an instant ratings hit.

"The press release for NBC's Manson-killings drama "AQUARIUS" says the show 'will go on for several seasons,'" tweeted Time magazine TV critic James Poniewozik. "Cue God's laughter."

It's been a running joke of Jimmy Kimmel's when he takes the stage each year at ABC's annual presentation to advertisers. "Don't get attached to our new shows," he said this time. "It's like adopting a kitten with cancer."

Vulture editor Joe Adalian took to Twitter to assess the landscape: "If you take out spinoffs and shows based on franchises, just 8 Big 4 shows launched since Sept. will be back for second seasons. #EndTimes."

Frustrated comments from viewers themselves have been a variation on this one posted to a Deadline.com story about CBS's planned offerings: "I'm not watching anything CBS has to offer above. They canceled five shows that I liked and expect me to watch something else new, when they don't give anything more than a season anymore."

Admittedly, it is a hard row to hoe. But this is the first time in my memory that viewers are resisting even trying new shows because of the likelihood of them not being picked up for a second season. We are now jaded as well. You think the internet would give them an out, but they have not...

It's the snake eating its tail: Networks cancel shows people aren't watching, but people don't want to watch shows the network is going to cancel. Is this the same old griping or something new?

There are many reasons why viewers don't latch onto new shows, including the most obvious: So many aren't any good. But as Netflix and Amazon and every other streaming service become even more embedded in our lives, are we increasingly asking ourselves: Why bother with a new show when it first airs? If it is worth checking out, I'll hear about it eventually.

"I think that's part of it," said Brad Agate, who heads up research at Horizon Media, "and that's something I've been thinking about."

He had a specific example in mind. "If you look at something like 'Under the Dome,' I didn't think that show was going to have a second season. But they put it on Amazon last summer four days after it aired on CBS. And while Amazon didn't release the numbers, I remember (CBS CEO) Les Moonves saying that (Amazon CEO) Jeff Bezos was very happy with the results of how many people were streaming the show.

"And I think that was part of the reason for bringing it back a second year: That hopefully those younger viewers who watch streaming video may want to watch it on CBS for Season 2." (The show returns with new episodes June 30.)

That approach requires patience from TV networks, a temperament in short supply when executives, by virtue of the job, focus on quarterly earnings and immediate gains.

And yet some of TV's strongest legacies are shows that started soft.

"Cheers," which premiered in 1982, is a frequently cited example. It was among the lowest-rated shows in its debut season. By 1990, it was No. 1. TV writer Ken Levine, whose credits include "Cheers," was asked about this on his blog not long ago. "How or why was 'Cheers' even renewed for the second season when its ratings were so bad?"

Levine's answer: "NBC was in a rebuilding period and that takes time." Also: "They had nothing else better to replace it with."

I asked Agate to weigh in. "'Hill Street Blues' was the same thing," he said. "The theory being, when your network is in last place, you can afford to be patient."

You have to wonder how far ABC's charmingly piquant family comedy "Trophy Wife" (from Chicagoan Sarah Haskins and featuring a breakout, endlessly watchable performance from 9-year-old actor Albert Tsai) could have gone with another season or two on the air to find an audience.

At the upfronts last week, ABC head Paul said he was sad to see the show go — "as if he had nothing to do with seeing it go." Hitfix's Daniel Fienberg noted on Twitter.

"Trophy Wife" actually should had been renewed based on the patience theory alone, because ABC is in fact at the bottom on the heap for the season. It is in fourth place among adults 18-49, beating out only the CW. But when you're near last place, maybe that is precisely when you can't afford to nurture an underperforming show.

Just days after the networks unveiled their new seasons, Nielsen announced it would be begin compiling detailed information about the age and gender of people tweeting about television.

Nielsen has been tracking Twitter TV ratings since September, compiling the number of tweets about TV, plus the number of people those tweets reach. The ratings measure "earned" Twitter activity, so tweets from those affiliated with a show (actors, writers and the like) do not count.

What is new is the addition of demographic data (which will be made available only to Nielsen subscribers).

Scan further down the list and you'll see titles that may surprise you, MTV's "Catfish: The TV Show" and VH1's "Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta" included.

Sometimes the number of actual tweets is surprisingly small but they have a big impact. "Anderson Cooper 360" generated only 32 tweets, but they were seen by nearly 2,000 people.

What has yet to be determined is what these numbers mean in a larger sense. Right now they are an "important complement " to traditional data like viewer numbers, according to Deirdre Bannon, a vice president with Nielsen who is one of the people heading up its Twitter TV Ratings.

"Networks, agencies, advertisers are all investing heavily in social and they're very keen to understand how to use that information and tap into the fact that people are engaging on social while watching television," she said.

The primary value of these numbers right now: "Twitter engagement is (playing a role) in media buying." So: advertisers are taking Twitter into account, especially now that Nielsen is able to break down social activity by demographic. (Age and gender are determined by a person's name, the text of his or her tweets, who they follow, etc.)

But then you have a skeptic like NBC's head of research Alan Wurtzel who, when asked if Twitter is influencing viewership, told the Financial Times: "I'm saying the emperor wears no clothes." He based his assessment on numbers compiled during this year's Winter Olympics, which is anything but typical snapshot.

Admittedly, it is a hard row to hoe. But this is the first time in my memory that viewers are resisting even trying new shows because of the likelihood of them not being picked up for a second season. We are now jaded as well. You think the internet would give them an out, but they have not...

Scott Smith, VP of content marketing at the Chicago-based ad agency Cramer-Krasselt, took a closer look at the data, specifically information that was released by Twitter earlier this month.

For the month of January, among those who saw TV-related tweets, 77 percent took some kind of action to watch the show — either watching it at some point later (42 percent), online (38 percent) or they picked up the remote, then and there, and changed the channel (33 percent).

"That 33 percent is a big deal," Smith wrote on his blog Our Man in Chicago. "Those are people who stopped watching their current show and took an immediate action (the one networks desire the most) because they saw tweets about it. It's really hard to change user behavior, especially while they're in the middle of that behavior and data that says tweets can do that refutes just about everything NBC's Alan Wurtzel said about social media not driving ratings."

When I caught up with Smith by phone he cautioned: "I don't believe this study is the be-all, end all. It doesn't answer the question definitively."

Also: 33 percent of the 2,000 or 3,000 people (a common range on Nielsen's top 10 list) is not a lot. It's in the neighborhood of 700-1,000 people. That's not going to impact viewership numbers in a meaningful way. But the smart money says Twitter's influence will only growing with each TV season.

Or as Smith put it: "If there's a naked emperor in this scenario, it's definitely Wurtzel, not Twitter."

Edgewater dreams

Director Chris Hefner's 2010 feature film "The Pink Hotel" was inspired by the old Edgewater Beach Hotel. "I started to draw connections between this hotel and the idea of an empire — a society that has this grandiose way of doing things, and those things start to fall apart," Hefner told the Chicago Reader in 2010. "There's this icon that the most important people involved themselves with for decades. How quickly it would disappear." It screens 8 p.m. Friday at Chicago Filmmakers. Go to chicagofilmmakers.org.

Homeless but not rootless

"Probably one of my unconscious driving forces is I'm trying to solve homelessness within the next 5 to 10 years so I don't end up on the streets," activist Mark Horvath says in the documentary "@home," directed by Chicagoan by Susanne Suffredin. The film screens (for free) at seven Chicago Park District locations across the city, Thursday-June 6, leading up to its premiere June 9 at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Go to athomedocumentary.org.

Crazy parents

The 2009 film "Dogtooth" (from Greece) tells the story of three sheltered young adults who still live at home. Their parents are so controlling and psychotic, they've created an entire alternate reality on their remote compound. Vocabulary gets mixed up (the siblings are told that "zombie" means "flower"), stray animals are perceived as threats and a blindfolded young woman is driven to their property every so often to perform sexual favors. It screens 9:30 p.m and 11 p.m. Thursday at the University of Chicago's Doc Films. Go to docfilms.uchicago.edu.

The Portage is back

Shuttered nearly a year ago for reasons owner Eddie Carranza has yet to disclose, the Portage Theater will reopen June 14 under new management. Charlie Burns, who will oversee all day-to-day operations, said he had been interested in leasing the property from Carranza since learning of its closing.

Burns said he and Carranza settled on a deal about six months ago and that the term of the lease is "for longer than five years." The programming lineup, he said, will include films as well as live comedy and music events. It had been speculated that Carranza closed up shop last year because of concerns about retaining a liquor license (a question that arose due to issues he is still working through with his other property, the Congress Theater). But Burns says he has in fact been able to retain that license.

The June 14 opening, which coincides with the Six Corners BBQ Fest, will include a free stand-up comedy show followed by a screening of three short films (also free), including Laurel and Hardy's "Big Business," accompanied on organ by the Silent Film Society's Jay Warren. Go to theportagetheater.com.

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